Novelda is a fabless semiconductor company specialising in nanoscale wireless low-power technology for ultra-high-resolution impulse radars.

Novelda offers OEM radar integrated circuit (IC) modules in different variants for use in application products.

Sensor for human vital sign monitoring

Novelda aims to be a world-leading provider of short-range radar sensors based on impulse radio technology. Our mission is to develop and manufacture impulse radar technology as a new electromagnetic sensor for human vital sign monitoring, personal security, environmental monitoring and other novel sensor applications.

The evolution of digital microelectronics has facilitated amazing computational systems. The combination of shrinking size with higher speed has given us computers running at several GHz clock rate with multiple processors all embedded in a small box with gigabytes of memory and terabytes of storage. What more do we need? In many ways, the PC is sufficient for most of our daily usage. We do not need much more computational power to read email or write documents.

With technology development relentlessly continuing, where do we go? Several forecasts indicate major market grows of microelectronics outside the PC. Paradigms like ubiquitous computing, smart dust, and wireless sensor networks indicate microelectronic systems to appear in all sorts of real-life gadgets. Although computational power is still important, other properties like small size, low power and robustness are appreciated. Additional embedded functions like wireless communication, sensor interfacing and even on-chip sensors are gaining importance.

CMOS impulse radar sensor

Novelda’s CMOS impulse radar sensor is an example of a novel type of versatile, electromagnetic (EM) sensor, embeddable in standard CMOS silicon. A radar is a device that emits EM waves and then measures the backscattered (reflected) energy. The CMOS solution making this sensor feasible is based on a fundamental new paradigm of microelectronics design that gets the best out of modern microelectronics. The core technology of the Novelda impulse radar technology requires no clock, yielding higher speed and lower power.

Nanoscale impulse radar

Novelda’s nanoscale NVA impulse radar is a small single-chip impulse radar that features close-range operation (0m-15m, 0m-60m). It is low energy and high resolution, with simultaneous observation of 512 depths with programmable depth resolution and greater than 30GHz sampling rate.